


When I thought he was mine, she caught him by the mouth

by felinedetached



Series: theioan stories (stories of the gods) [5]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Do Not Fuck With The Goddess Of Love, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 23:45:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13845555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felinedetached/pseuds/felinedetached
Summary: You were the same when rosy-fingered Dawn fell in love with Orion. Free and easy yourselves, you were outraged at her conduct, and in the end chaste Artemis of the golden throne rose, attacked him in Ortygie with her gentle arrows and left him dead. - Calypso, Book V,The Odyssey





	When I thought he was mine, she caught him by the mouth

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in the business of misery, let's take it from the top  
> She's got a body like an hourglass that's ticking like a clock  
> It's a matter of time before we all run out  
> When I thought he was mine, she caught him by the mouth
> 
> \- [Misery Business, Paramore](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCyGvGEtOwc)

Eos wakes with the dawn each morning, for she  _ is _ the dawn, and it is really that the day wakes with her. She wakes, and watches over the land as Apollo guides the sun high in the sky, watches until Astraeus wakes in her bed, and she smiles as she takes his place, laying on cloud-soft fabric.

 

Life is simple, and it is good, and Eos is happy with this.

 

At least, she is, until Ares.

 

Ares is charismatic, handsome, kind. He takes her far and wide, when he can escape from his duties as the God of War. She thinks she loves him, perhaps, but she is not sure. Eos does not know if she is capable of love - at least not beyond the love of her brother and husband (whom she married because it was her duty, and not from any sort of love at all) - but she could have known, had she just asked any of the many gods who deal with it.

 

Gods do not seek counsel from other gods, no matter how much they should.

 

Eros would have told her that she felt love just fine; although she may not have believed him. Sexual desire, however, as is his area of expertise, is something she is completely aware that she feels. (He is also aware she feels it, but Eros, as is his due, especially as he has yet to meet Psyche - and that is a story for another time - confuses desire with love often. None blame him for it.)

 

Aphrodite, on the other hand, the woman born from sea and blood and passion (anger, precisely, but love is born of anger often, in her experience - passion does not differentiate) would tell her she does not. Has not.

 

And so she does.

 

Aphrodite travels to where the golden-red home of Eos and Astraeus rests, and she knocks on the door with dainty hand and firm sound. Given that Apollo had just recently set off with his chariot, it was Eos to answer the door, as Aphrodite had planned.

 

“Aphrodite!” Eos exclaimed, “What an unexpected surprise! Please, come in.” She stepped aside to let the goddess of love into her home, and went to fetch some wine.

 

“Ah,” Aphrodite said, “yes, that may be a good idea. Eos, I have come to talk to you about Ares.”

 

“Ares?” Eos says as they sit together at the table, “what about him?”

 

“You are not in love,” Aphrodite tells her, blunt yet soft, breaking the news as kindly as she knows how “and it is hurting him.”

 

Eos laughs at this, her head thrown back, cheeks the same rosy colour associated with her waking and with her fingers.

  
  
“Hurt the god of war, because I have him and do not love him?”

 

“It sounds absurd,” Aphrodite agrees, “but you and all Olympus know as I do that Ares is not as the mortals paint him.”

 

“Do we?” Eos asks, “They paint him as a fantastic lover, and someone willing to aid in war. I see him as just that.”

 

“You know as well as I do that that is not all that they paint him as” Aphrodite replies, disapproval colouring her tone. “I do not wish to see the boy I watched grow up be hurt.”

 

“Boy?” Eos scoffs, “He is the god of war. He may have been around a far smaller time than the rest of us, but he is most certainly not a boy. I can guarantee you, goddess of love, he has seen more horrors than you ever will.”

 

“I watched Kronos rise and fall,” Aphrodite says, voice soft and venomous. “I aided the gods who struck him down. I fought in the Titan War, and the Giant War. Yes, I am the goddess of love, but the power of love - and the loss of it - is not something you can discount, goddess of Dawn.”

 

“The dawn rises on terrible things.”

  
  
“And so does a broken heart fall.”

 

Eos does not believe Aphrodite - refuses to.

 

“If this is your wish, then so have it be. You will find that Ares is no longer enough to slake your desire, my friend.” Aphrodite throws a smile over her shoulder as she leaves. It is dark and dangerous, and really more of a smirk.

 

~~º0º~~

 

Eos feels it the next morning, when she wakes up to a desperate hunger. She takes Ares three times that day, and she thinks she may have broken him, because she went to get water and came back to an empty bed.

 

And so she turns to all those her light touches. She goes for a huntress, once, and Artemis just about cuts her hand off.

 

“I will not have you use my huntress and then toss her aside like nothing more than a toy,” she says, silver eyes cold as ice. Eos does not argue, and finds others to target.

 

It is not long before she notices the Titan. He travels with Artemis - and the huntress’s stone-cold gaze still frightens Eos - but he is not protected by her. He is free to take and be taken.

 

So Eos does.

 

She takes him as many times as she took Ares, that day so long ago, the day after Aphrodite cursed her with this insanity, and then she takes him more. He laughs, delighted, the first to keep up, and she grins, teeth bared, and it’s all aggression and hunger.

 

Eos only stops when her brother wakes, falling into an exhausted sleep with her mind still full of ways to slake this unslakable curse. 

(It is futile, of course, but whoever claimed the gods were sane was lying.)

 

The Dawn wakes with her the next morning, and she wakes him.

 

“What is your name?” she asks, still panting.

 

“Orion,” he tells her, and he is panting too, although far harder. He is wearing down. Aphrodite’s smirk echoes behind her closed eyelids, and she grits her teeth. She  _ will _ find her way around this, if it is the last thing she ever does.

 

And then Artemis comes, as her brother’s chariot lands and Astraeus begins to stir.

 

“Eos,” she says, “I warned you.”

 

Eos laughs, delighted.

 

“He isn’t one of your huntresses, is he? He seems  _ far _ too male for that. No,” she pants, grins, coiled aggression and neverending frustration and says, “Did you take a liking to him? A virgin goddess, such as yourself?”

 

Artemis looks down at her, looks down at Orion, who is tiring and scared, and she smiles sad and low.

 

“Not as you insinuated,” she says, “but I did care for him and I am sorry for what I must do.”

 

A silvery arrow drives through Orion’s heart, into the bed below. He chokes, blood filling his lungs, and he dies.

 

“No!” Eos rages, turns on Artemis, who fends her off easily even as she calls to the Stars themselves.

 

“Take Orion amongst you, and keep him from Dawn! Let him ride by my chariot each night as I guide the moon and stars through the sky! Take him, stars, and become him as you see fit.”

 

“No!” Eos yells again, turning to the bed as her lover (toy, really, although she would never admit it) turns to silver and starlight, flowing out the window and into the sky. 

 

“Find someone else to be your toy,” Artemis says, and her kind smile is somehow scarier than Aphrodite’s smirk. 

 

And then she leaves. The moon rises, and the sun comes out, and Eos’s brother-husband wakes, and Eos, rosy-fingered dawn, is left standing in the night. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr [@faeflowerfeline](https://faeflowerfeline.tumblr.com/)


End file.
